Cambodia

The Japanese Occupation, 1941-45

In 1940 the Japanese government, after negotiating a treaty of
friendship with Thailand, sought special concessions in Indochina
from the French colonial authorities. The Vichy administration in
Hanoi, under pressure from the German government, signed an
agreement with Tokyo that permitted the movement of Japanese troops
through the transportation hubs of Indochina.

Thailand subsequently sought to take advantage of both its
friendship with Tokyo and French military weakness in the region by
launching an invasion of Cambodia's western provinces. Although the
French suffered a series of land defeats in the skirmishes that
followed, a unique twist in the confrontation came from a naval
battle that ensued near the Thai island of Ko Chang. A small French
naval force intercepted a Thai battle fleet, en route to attack
Saigon, and sank two battleships and other light craft. The
Japanese then intervened and arranged a treaty, signed in Tokyo in
March 1941, compelling the French to concede to Thailand the
provinces of Batdambang, Siemreab, and parts of Kampong Thum and
Stoeng Treng. Cambodia thus lost one-third of its territory and
nearly half a million citizens.

The Japanese, while leaving the Vichy colonial government
nominally in charge throughout Indochina, established in Cambodia
a garrison that numbered 8,000 troops by August 1941. Preservation
of order on a day-to-day basis, however, continued to be the
responsibility of the colonial authorities, who were permitted to
retain the constabulary and the light infantry battalion. These
forces were sufficient to quell the first stirrings of
nationalistic unrest in 1941 and in 1942.

Anti-French agitation assumed a more overt form, in July 1942,
when early nationalist leaders Pach Chhoeun and Son Ngoc Thanh
organized a demonstration in Phnom Penh over an obscure incident
involving Cambodian military personnel. In this occurrence, a monk
named Hem Chieu attempted to subvert some Khmer military personnel
by involving them in vague coup plotting against the colonial
administration. The plot was discovered, and the monk was arrested;
Chhoeun and Thanh, believing they had tacit Japanese support,
staged a march on the French residency by some 2,000 people, many
of them monks. The repressive reaction by the colonial authorities
resulted in many injuries and in mass arrests. Although the
Japanese failed to support Thanh as he had expected, they spirited
him away to Japan, where he was trained for the next three years
and was commissioned a captain in the Japanese army. Chhoeun was
arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.

On March 9, 1945, Japanese forces in Indochina, including those
in Cambodia, overthrew the French colonial administration; and, in
a bid to revive the flagging support of local populations for
Tokyo's war effort, they encouraged indigenous rulers to proclaim
independence
(see The Emergence of Nationalism
, ch. 1). During this
period of Japanese-sponsored independence, the fate of the
constabulary and of the light infantry battalion remained
uncertain. The battalion apparently was demobilized for the most
part, while the constabulary remained in place but was reduced to
ineffectuality. Presumably both forces were leaderless because
their French officers were interned by the Japanese for the
remainder of the war.

Tokyo, however, did not plan to leave the Indochinese countries
without a military force following the March 9 coup. Plans had been
prepared for the creation of 5 volunteer units of 1,000 troops
each. There was no thought that such a native force would fight
alongside Japanese troops, but rather that it would be used to
preserve public order and internal security. It was intended that
recruitment of indigenous personnel for the volunteer units would
be through physical and written exams. Before the plan could be
implemented in Cambodia, however, the war ended, and the concept
died without further action.

The conclusion of World War II caused considerable turmoil in
Cambodia: a defeated Japanese military contingent waited to be
disarmed and repatriated; French nationals newly released from
internment sought to resume their prewar existence; diverse Allied
military units returned to Phnom Penh to reimpose a colonial
administration. In the countryside there were two sources of
unrest. On the western fringes of the country, the Khmer Issarak
(see Appendix B), nationalist insurgents
with Thai backing, declared their opposition to a French return to power
in Cambodia, proclaimed a government-in-exile, and established a base in
Batdambang Province
(see fig. 1). On the eastern frontier, the
Vietnamese communist forces, or Viet Minh
(see Appendix B) infiltrated
the Cambodian border provinces, organized a "Khmer People's Liberation Army"
(not to be confused with the later Cambodian force, the Kampuchean
(or Khmer) People's National Liberation Armed Forces
[KPNLAF--see Appendix B], which is
sometimes called the Khmer People's National Liberation Army), and
began seeking a united front with the Khmer Issarak.